The time has come for the Australian cricket team to institute a genuine fast bowling rotation system rather than just pay lip service to the concept.
Josh Hazlewood turns 34 early next month, Mitchell Starc a few weeks later will be 35, a milestone Scott Boland has already reached.
Pat Cummins is entering the veteran phase of a fast bowler’s life cycle when he hits 32 in May.
Like the West Indies did way back when with Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh or England more recently with Stuart Broad and James Anderson, it has reached a point where the Australians need to have hard and fast rules surrounding their ageing quicks.
Boland’s numbers since his stunning debut three years ago suggest he’s been short-changed, considering his record stacks up well against the Big Three during that timeframe.
The first wildcard that is being thrown into the mix is Jhye Richardson, who has been included in the squad for the final two Tests of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series against India.
Boland is the odds-on favourite to come into the team for Hazlewood at the MCG on Boxing Day after he suffered a calf injury during the third Test in Brisbane.
And it appears he will be fighting with Richardson for the third seamer’s spot at the SCG in the series finale.
Even though Cummins and Starc had to shoulder a heavy workload in the first innings at the Gabba with Hazlewood off the field and Mitchell Marsh only used sparingly, the skipper has foreshadowed that he and his left-arm colleague will play through the final two Tests.
“I can’t imagine that changing,” he said after the final day of the third Test was washed out, pointing to the rain delays helping them stay fresh before the gruelling assignment of two Tests in the space of 13 days at Australia’s two biggest cities.
Just like they did before the Ashes last year, the Aussies said they would consider rotating their quicks around but after giving Boland the World Test Championship final and two of the first three matches against England, they stuck with the established trio for the remainder of the series.
Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon. (Photo by Mark Metcalfe – CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images)
And at the start of this summer, similar sentiments were aired by the Australian camp and if not for Josh Hazlewood’s side strain then calf problems, it’s likely Boland would have not been sighted all series while Richardson and the likes of Sean Abbott, Brendan Doggett, Lance Morris, Spencer Johnson and Xavier Bartlett can only watch on from afar, crossing their fingers that they too might one day get a chance at Test level.
To be fair to Starc and Cummins (and even the selection panel who cop so much grief for their myopic nature), they have both performed brilliantly against India.
They have 14 wickets apiece at averages of under 25 and strike rates under 40, only overshadowed by Jasprit Bumrah’s brilliance.
The selectors have let it be known this week that you can’t pick a team based on numbers, which is true – statistics only tell part of a story.
But the numbers do show that Starc in particular struggles the longer a series goes on. In the fourth Test of a series, he has taken just 22 wickets from eight matches with his career average of 27.55 blowing out to 46.5.
He also doesn’t fare well in the fifth match of a series, although his record in five matches is an improvement – 18 wickets at 32.27.
To put those numbers into perspective, he averages 25.51, 24.61 and 28.71 respectively in the first, second and third Tests across the course of his 13-year career.
Jhye Richardson celebrates the wicket of Haseeb Hameed in 2021. (Photo by Mark Brake – CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images)
Cummins, being the ultra consistent iron man that he is, does not drop off much at all as a series progresses – he averages 29.25 in fourth Tests but that drops to 22.81 for fifth Tests, only fractionally above his career mark of 22.61.
Boland is not the kind of player to complain or say much at all but he could end up one of the unluckier players in Australian Test history given that he has taken 40 wickets at 20.42 in the 11 matches he’s played since he slaughtered the English in taking 6-7 on his home track on debut.
Cummins has 112 wickets at 24.71 in 30 Tests since that same match, Starc has 108 at 28.04 in his 29 and Hazlewood 64 at 21.01 in his 16 starts.
Hazlewood is already showing signs of wear and tear while Starc, a year older, has been resilient injury wise.
The problem with fast bowlers when they hit their mid 30s is that if they lose a fraction of zip, whether that’s pace through the air or movement off the pitch, their effectiveness can vanish as batters realise they no longer possess the fear factor they once had.
Players like Jason Gillespie, Brett Lee and Mitchell Johnson in recent times went from potent wicket-takers to slightly better than run-of-the-mill seamers in the final year or so of their careers before they saw the writing on the wall and quickly pulled the pin.
The problem facing Australia if that a similar scenario plays out with Hazlewood, Starc and then Cummins, the next cabs off the rank have no kilometres on the odometer at Test level apart from Richardson’s three Tests in 2019-21.
When the Windies’ golden era had well and truly faded they rotated Ambrose and Walsh on tours to preserve their legs because they were concerned about the lack of depth coming through. And they were right.
Scott Boland celebrates with teammates. (Photo by Gareth Copley-ICC/ICC via Getty Images)
England cut Anderson and Broad from the white-ball formats to keep them fresh for Tests and they ended up playing several more years than expected while still performing at an elite level.
Australia have employed somewhat of a rotational policy across the three formats in recent years which can pretty much be boiled down to Cummins, Starc and Hazlewood sitting out any limited-overs tours or series that aren’t ICC showpiece tournaments with Abbott, Johnson, Nathan Ellis and co filling the gaps.
To get the best out of Starc, Hazlewood and Boland as they move into their late 30s, the Aussies need to be more strategic in how they use them while also ushering in more fast bowling talent into the Test arena.
Some of these players in the bowling bullpen could turn out to be world-beaters, some might not cut it at that level but no one will ever know if they never get a go.
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